Reading and Writing Since 2006

Unfinished Business

The DNF pile is by definition a mixed bag. Even if I try hard to find something, anything, there is absolutely nothing to link Mask of Innocence with David Sedaris’ short story collection, except for the fact that I didn’t finish either of these two books.

Actually I stopped trying to read these two books somewhere during the summer, but I kept some illusions to finish the Sedaris collection until recently. Until I was stuck in the middle and a gentle reader suggested I filed bankruptcy on some of my huge pile. I only post about them both together because I didn’t want to single the Mask of Innocence out. (There was an interesting discussion over at Café Society recently about what to do when one does not exactly love a book… I definitely choose to review, as is the case today)

This one was a poor choice on my side, and my excuse for it would be the great cover photo (who wouldn’t be interested to know more about this mysterious, glamorous red-head? confession: I’m a red-head myself). The novel’s subtitle promised “love, lust, loyalty and deception”, and it did deliver some, but I was annoyed by the lack of clear historical setting. We never learn exactly when the book is supposed to take place, and it’s probably just as well, because historical accuracy is neither here nor there. The main character, Francesca Merchant, lives in the big house in the Cotswolds. People ride horses, maids do curtsies a lot, mysterious events in the evening are lit by candles, but characters speak and react as 21st century people, and that grated on my nerves. I read 25% of it and then skimmed through the rest. There were twists and turns galore, but the whole adventure was not for me.

As for the Sedaris, it started great and it somehow petered out after a third of the book. There were days I could relate to the zany, dysfunctional family character Sedaris paints, but I discovered that it takes a particular mood to fit a Sedaris story. When I feel great and snarky and confident, I laugh out loud. When I feel less than great and tender and shaky, I don’t see the humor in it and sometimes it feels mean and/or pathetic. But it’s probably me.

That said, the stories about France are great and many expats will probably relate. I hope I will return to this collection one day when I feel in the right mood.

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2 thoughts on “Unfinished Business”

I would have given up on the Shepherd as well – I really dislike historical inaccuracy. One of my book groups read an historical novel recently set in the mid nineteenth century full of twenty-first century language; we were damning. The first job of an historical novelist, it seems to me, is to accurately recreate the period they are writing about, otherwise what is the point?